The van's rear suspension let out a strained groan, and its tail sank a full two inches.
The assistant supervisor stared at the square gold box forced into the trunk, his face twitching uncontrollably. This was not surprise. This was a meager salary bearing a weight far beyond its pay grade.
Bang. Yang Jian reached back and locked the trunk.
Cast from pure gold, polished inside, and riveted shut. Its capacity was just enough to hold a curled-up adult.
A day and a half, all spent hammering it together by hand. Four blood blisters had formed on Yang Jian's palms, but he had managed to build this coffin that completely isolated supernatural forces. In this world of jujutsu, which had no experience dealing with ghosts, a bit of plain, honest handiwork was often what kept a person alive.
The van started and drove out through Jujutsu High's gates.
"What's the situation at the hospital?" Yang Jian asked coldly.
Suguru Geto opened the folder on his lap. "That night, Jujutsu High worked with the police to seal off the entire building under the pretext of structural hazards. The patrol team found no abnormal cursed energy, but the temperature from the third floor up was almost five degrees lower than outside."
Yang Jian nodded. A sharp drop in temperature was a deathly sign that a ghost domain had spread completely.
Satoru Gojo turned back from the passenger seat, biting on a lollipop, his sunglasses slipping down his nose. His gaze circled twice between the black cloth-covered box at Yang Jian's feet and the folded gold bags at his waist.
"You spent three days banging away in your room just to make this pile of scrap metal?" Satoru Gojo scoffed. "I thought you were practicing some secret technique."
Yang Jian ignored his mockery and tossed him a folded gold bag. "Body bag. Pure gold. For holding ghosts."
Satoru Gojo fumbled to catch it. Its oppressive weight made his movements falter.
"If we run into something I can't handle," Yang Jian said, pointing at the bag, "get inside. As long as you don't stick your head out, the gold will save your sorry ass."
The air suddenly went quiet.
The divine prodigy born once in a century in Jujutsu Society, the strongest man alive, had been handed a body bag to hide in? Satoru Gojo stared at the gold body bag through his sunglasses, so thoroughly choked by those words that he could not get a single syllable out. Beside him, Suguru Geto quietly tucked the other bag into his pocket, pretending not to see his best friend's humiliated expression.
Yang Jian leaned against his seat, reviewing the system panel in his mind.
Three days. The system issued rewards once a day, and he had hoped to get a trial card that suited him. Instead, over three consecutive days-one Red Ghost Candle, two White Ghost Candles, and one Straw Rope Circle.
All items. No trial cards.
Yang Jian cursed inwardly. System, are you running a general store here?
But once he calmed down and thought it over, these items were actually perfect for today's situation. Ghost Candles to detect and locate, the Straw Rope Circle to restrict movement, and his own Ghost Eye-if the opponent's supernatural strength was not too high, the whole procedure could work.
He lifted a corner of the black cloth, revealing the small wooden box inside. It was an old box he had found in Jujutsu High's storeroom. He had hollowed out the inside, leaving just enough room for three Ghost Candles and a Straw Rope Circle.
"What kind of candles are these?" Suguru Geto noticed the two colors inside.
"Once this red one is lit, ghosts won't approach the area illuminated by its flame. How fast it burns depends on the ghost's strength. The stronger the ghost, the faster it burns." Yang Jian rolled the Red Ghost Candle between his fingers. "You can also judge how close a ghost is by the size of the flame."
"And the white ones?"
"The opposite. Once lit, they attract ghosts. Ghosts will prioritize attacking whoever holds the White Ghost Candle."
Suguru Geto looked at the two White Ghost Candles and fell silent for two seconds. "You're planning to use yourself as bait."
"No need for that." Yang Jian put the Ghost Candle back and picked up a roughly woven loop of straw rope. "This is the Straw Rope Circle. A ghost that enters it will be restrained. Put the White Ghost Candle on the floor, then slip the Straw Rope Circle over the ghost. It should hold a B-rank one for about a minute and a half."
"You don't put it inside the circle and use them together?" Suguru Geto asked, narrowing his eyes.
"No, they can't work together that way. The Straw Rope Circle can contain supernatural forces, but it also contains the White Ghost Candle's light. If you burn a White Ghost Candle inside the Straw Rope Circle, the light that attracts ghosts won't be able to spread out."
"Is a minute and a half enough?"
"Yes."
The buildings outside the window began to thin out. The Third Hospital stood in Tokyo's outer districts, surrounded by blocks of aging residential buildings. By evening, there were few pedestrians.
Twenty minutes later, the van stopped a hundred meters from the Third Hospital.
Sheet-metal fencing sealed off the entire building, and yellow police tape snapped in the night wind. Nothing looked unusual from outside.
But as Yang Jian tilted his head up, the Ghost Eye beneath the skin of his forehead began spinning violently.
In the Ghost Eye's crimson vision, the hospital changed. Its gray-white walls were gone. A layer of sodden, pus-oozing gray paper plastered the entire building, and lifeless dark stains crawled upward from the base of the walls.
The other ghost's ghost domain had fully awakened.
"The building's covered by a ghost domain," Yang Jian said.
Satoru Gojo removed his sunglasses and scanned it with his six eyes. He frowned. "I can't see it."
"That's normal. This thing isn't on your cursed energy wavelength."
Yang Jian closed his eyes. The flesh on his forehead tore open.
A crimson vertical pupil bulged out!
Like floodwaters bursting through a dam, red light erupted around Yang Jian, silently but forcefully piercing the fencing, walls, and reinforced concrete. This was no probe. It was a violent crushing and forced replacement of that gray ghost domain.
Wherever the red light reached, the gray membrane vanished like thin paper meeting flame.
The lingering chill instantly fell away, and the building's interior layout appeared in Yang Jian's mind without anything concealed. From the second floor to the fifth, four traces of cursed spirit presence, tainted by the foul stench of human interference, were darting around.
Yang Jian opened his eyes.
"There are four cursed spirits inside. All artificially raised."
Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto exchanged a glance.
"Two Grade 2s, two Grade 1s. Scattered between the second and fifth floors." Yang Jian looked at them. "But they aren't today's target. Deal with them yourselves, and keep an eye out for any new clues. The main target is that ghost. I'll handle it."
"Artificially raised..." Suguru Geto's voice darkened. "More human sacrifices?"
"Most likely." Yang Jian picked up the gold box. "Let's go inside first. Stay focused."
The three passed through the fencing and entered the hospital lobby.
Yang Jian set the gold box down in the center of the first-floor lobby and took the Straw Rope Circle and a White Ghost Candle out of the wooden box.
With both hands in his pockets, Satoru Gojo watched Yang Jian light a ghastly white candle.
The flame flickered.
"That's it? We're playing whack-a-mole?" Satoru Gojo raised an eyebrow.
"More or less."
"This ghost's ghost domain became useless once mine covered it. That means its supernatural strength isn't high."
The instant his words fell-
Cold.
It was not a drop in temperature, but a deathly stillness that seemed to drain the life directly from the living, suddenly pouring into the entire lobby. Their breath instantly condensed into thick white mist, and a strange layer of white frost rapidly formed around their ankles.
Yang Jian stepped back, took a Red Ghost Candle from inside his clothes, and lit it.
Suguru Geto looked at the Ghost Candle in Yang Jian's hand. Its flame was flickering faster and faster.
"It's nearby?"
Yang Jian did not answer.
He activated his third-layer ghost domain.
His vision shifted. Everything invisible to ordinary people appeared.
"Don't move." Yang Jian's voice was completely flat.
Within his red-tinted vision, a flat, gray-white outline drifted lifelessly toward them from the end of the corridor on the lobby's south side. It dragged a long, soaking-wet tail behind it, leaving pitch-black water stains in its wake.
In reality, there was nothing there.
Satoru Gojo's six eyes were fully active, his azure eyes frantically analyzing the surrounding space. No cursed energy, no physical form, no cursed residue. Even at point-blank range, he could not see that thing at all!
For the first time in his life, this divine prodigy who had always stood above everything became utterly blind in battle.
The uncertainty of that blind spot made Satoru Gojo instinctively gather a Blue at his fingertips.
"I said, don't move." Yang Jian's cold bark interrupted him.
Meanwhile, in the world only Yang Jian could see, the B-rank gray ghost had slid up to the White Ghost Candle without any obstruction.
Using his ghost domain, Yang Jian moved swiftly above the ghost and dropped the Straw Rope Circle over it.
Click.
It sounded as though some valve had been locked shut in the empty lobby. The gray-white outline froze abruptly, like a fly encased in amber. Its tail, trailing water stains, hung motionless in midair, unable to move another inch.
The Straw Rope Circle had worked.
Then Yang Jian shook open the heavy gold body bag in his hands and pulled it down over the ghost.
Screeech!
The instant it touched gold, a piercing shriek erupted from inside the bag, like fingernails raking furiously across a blackboard. But the moment Yang Jian jerked the opening tightly shut with both hands, the sharp noise stopped dead.
Everything returned to deathly silence. Once wrapped in gold, a supernatural entity became a lifeless thing stripped of its claws and fangs.
Yang Jian tossed it into the gold box and fastened the latch. All in one seamless motion.
Data flickered wildly across his retinas:
[Containment successful. Target: unnamed gray ghost (B-rank).] [Redeemable points: 10,000.] [Supernatural incursion, Supernatural Land: Tokyo Metropolitan Third Hospital. Resolved. Reward for resolving the first supernatural incursion: 100,000 points.] (Ghost Shadow: "Beginner special!" Price: 10,000 points)
Perfect. A stiff smile tugged at the corner of Yang Jian's mouth.
Cursed energy roared in the stairwell. In less than three minutes, the four disturbed cursed spirits had been reduced to ash at Gojo's and Geto's hands.
The system displayed another notification: [Cursed spirits killed ×4. Total points gained: 500.]
Suguru Geto descended the stairs and returned the Red Ghost Candle in his hand to Yang Jian, his expression thunderous. "We still can't find the source. The traces left behind are too clean. Their cursed energy control is frighteningly precise. Are we just letting them get away?"
Yang Jian took the Ghost Candle and extinguished it. Only a short section had burned away. He tucked it back inside his clothes. "If the three of us together can't find anything, let the higher-ups worry about it."
Without hesitation, Yang Jian picked up the gold box and headed outside.
Sacrifices spanning multiple regions, artificially manipulated cursed spirit growth, meticulously erased traces... Every clue pointed toward a parasite that had lived for a thousand years.
Kenjaku.
But right now, he had no time to deal with that freak who could even flip open his own skull.
"Back to Jujutsu High." Yang Jian yanked open the van's door, the harsh streetlight falling across his impassive face. "Find somewhere safe. It's time I took control of my next ghost."
Before you continue